Wypszycka Reseña a Bagnall

The Journal of Juristic Papyrologyvol. xl (2010), pp. 249266

Ewa Wipszycka

BOOKS, LITERACY, AND CHRISTIAN COMMUNITIES

ON TWO RECENT BOOKS BY ROGER S. BAGNALL*

These two slender volumes are among the most important workson Antiquity written in this generation, owing to both their subject

literacy, and their author Roger S. Bagnall. They are written with thatremarkable clarity and straightforwardness that is achieved (by some)after years of intensive work testifying to the authors broad horizons andtechnical mastery in interpreting papyri and inscriptions. Bagnall demon-strates how to write a scholarly text using only the plain language of thehumanities, without resorting to technical terminology or introducingnew, bombastic-sounding words that annoy everyone except the authorhimself. This is the reason why he is such an excellent translator ofresearch results produced by papyrologists to the entire milieu of stu-dents of Antiquity; as a rule papyrologists write primarily for their col-leagues, yet at the same time they get aggravated when researchers fromoutside the guild neglect to cite their work.

* Roger S. Bagnall, Early Christian Books in Egypt, Princeton University Press, Prince-ton Oxford 2009, 104 pp. with the French version: Livres chrtiens antiques dgypte,Librarie Droz, Genve 2009, 109 pp (cole Pratique des Hautes tudes. Sciences Historiques etPhilologiques iii. Hautes tudes du Monde Grco-Romain xliv); and Everyday Writing in theGraeco-Roman East, University of California Press, Berkeley Los Angeles London 2011,179 pp. (Sather Classical Lectures lxix).

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The basis for these books are lectures delivered at UC Berkeley, aspart of the Sather Classical Lectures (2005), and at the cole Pratique desHautes tudes (2006). In both cases the audience consisted of membersof the same profession, so the lecturer was free to maintain a high schol-arly level and was expected to provide a new approach to fundamentaltopics rather than (or perhaps besides) new information. The lectures area part of a splendid academic tradition and the invitation to deliver themis the highest form of recognition of the invited scholars achievements,all the more effective that it leaves a mark in literature on the subject.

I have started my review with a general opinion on the books, insteadof placing it at the end, to make it clear how highly I value them and howmuch pleasure I have derived from reading them. Their discussion willsometimes lead me to reject Bagnalls ideas, so I do not wish to leave thereader under a false impression of cumulated pretences. A part of mypolemic with Bagnall concerns the results of calculations he makes onvarious occasions, exercising his belief that views should be expressedwith gures whenever possible.1 I do realise that I belong to an older gen-eration and that I was raised in a different milieu of historical culturethan Bagnall. I received my academic formation in Warsaw and at thecole Pratique des Hautes tudes, where I was effectively instructed notto calculate anything that is not directly supported by the sources. I am,however, anything but proud of this and I do my best to curb my distrustfor gures presented in tabular form, since I have often learnt in the pastthat I am utterly anachronistic in my persistent scepticism. I accept mostof Bagnalls calculations and consider them of great value. However, insome cases I believe that he is simply wrong because the data he uses donot entitle him to perform his computations.

I will begin my discussion with the Paris lectures published in 2009.They contain a summary of knowledge collected to date on Christianbooks circulating in Egypt in pre-Constantinian times.

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1 I was amused by passage from p. 61 of Everyday Writing, which illustrates the authorsattachment to data expressed with gures: discussing research on slavery in the periodfrom the 4th century onwards, when the number of texts attesting slavery dwindles, hewrites: At all events, I believe the numbers game must be abandoned for this subject.



A note on the condition of the books is due to the non-papyrologist.Christian books from this period have reached us in fragments, oftenvery small ones. Unfortunately, we seldom know their provenance, letalone their archaeological context. Most of them reached the hands ofscholars through the antiquarian market. Their date is usually based onpalaeographical grounds and therefore, as it is often the case with literarytexts copied by professionals scribes, the achieved results are uncertain.The small size of preserved passages is an additional obstacle; the discus-sion of the size of letters, columns, &c., is poorly founded. And anothernote: even with small fragments it is possible to tell whether we are deal-ing with a literary work in scroll or in codex form: in the latter case thetext on the verso is a continuation of the recto and this is clear at rstglance.

Bagnalls rst objective was to compile a register of Christian booksfor which we have reason to believe that they came into being in the 2ndcentury or in the rst quarter of the 3rd century. The results of hisresearch are presented in table i.1 on p. 17.

The results of Bagnalls research are even more momentous than onemight think after a rst glance at the table. If we take a closer look at theentries in the rst column we see that the oldest texts are datable to no ear-lier than the last quarter of the 2nd century. What is more, Bagnall provesthat their lack (as well as the lack of documents mentioning Christians) isnormal, in the sense that very small groups had no chance of leaving a tracein the papyrological record.

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Dated ii or ii/iii Dated early iii Total

Old Testament 3 8 11

New Testament 3 6 9

New Testament Apocrypha 1 2 3

Hermas 1 3 4

Dubiously Christian 0 2 2

Total 8 21 29


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Bagnall operates on sensitive material (the reader will nd an example ofthis in chapter 2: Two Case Studies). With the exception of those whooppose the Christian God for personal reasons, everyone wants thepapyrus nds to be as old and as numerous as possible, believing they con-stitute the best proof of the strength of Christian communities and thespeed of their development. Meanwhile, Bagnalls analysis puts an end toattempts to draw conclusions on the development of Christian communi-ties in the Egyptian chora based on Christian manuscripts of the rst threequarters of the 2nd century. Therefore, considering that in literary texts wehave no information on Christians active in the Egyptian chora in the 1stand 2nd centuries, we have to admit that we know nothing about the Chris-tian communities in this region. It cannot be determined whether thesilence of the sources should be considered meaningful or incidental. Bag-nall insightfully and convincingly argues that not only do we know nothing,but we also have no chance of nding anything in the future. The scienti-cally correct approach should be to take the advice of Ludwig Wittgen-stein: Worber man nicht sprechen kann, darber muss man schweigen.This will be very difcult. Bagnalls voice may be the voice of one crying outin the desert.

I have read Bagnalls arguments feeling that in the matter he dis cussesI do not have a clear conscience. A few years ago I conducted research onthe history of Egyptian Christianity in the period before the great turn-ing point constituted by the time of the Little Peace (from the death ofValerian to the Diocletianic persecution); I then published an article pro-posing a new model of the development of ecclesiastical institutions inthe chora of this period.2 Its point of departure was a mention in theChronicle of Eutychios, the Melkite patriarch of Alexandria in the 10thcentury, according to which it was not until the bishop of AlexandriaDemetrios, in ofce for 43 years (189233), that the rst three bishops forthe chora were ordained (unfortunately he does not mention when theseordinations occurred, or for which cities). This piece of information,although it differs radically from the traditional portrayal of the develop-

2 Ewa Wipszycka, The Origins of Monarchic Episcopate in Egypt, Adamantius 12(2006), pp. 7189.



ment of the Church in Egypt based on Eusebius account, is highly prob-able (arguments in favour of this the reader will nd in the cited article;repeating them would occupy too much space). In the light of thisaccount Christian congregations (specically congregations, not individ-ual Christians) appeared in the chora in the last quarter of the 2nd centu-ry at the earliest. I must admit, it was hard for me to accept this idea (Iwas not the only one to object to the theory of the late penetration of theChristian religion into Egypt at a time when the Christian community ofAlexandria was ourishing). This protest led to a hypothesis that in the2nd century there existed Christian congregations in the chora, but therewere no bishops; the churches would have been run by presbyters electedby members of the congregations. It was only Demetrios who managedto initiate the process of establishing episcopal sees a process that wasslow as it met with resistance of the congregations, which did not wish tobe ruled by Alexandria. The entire construct made sense under the condi-tion of nding proof that groups of Christians existed in the chora. Thereader already realises that to me this proof was the early presence of Chris-tian texts among literary papyri. Bagnalls lecture destroyed my construct,or at least its greater part.

My interpretation also turned out to be wrong for another reason(when delivering his lectures Bagnall did not know about it yet, whichexplains why he did not mention it when he rightly criticised my modelof the Church in the 2nd century). Namely, 2006 brought the rst tidingsof a new Ethiopian collection of normative texts that included, amongother works, a list of bishops ordained by successive leaders of theAlexandrian Church from Mark the Evangelist to Peter i (300311).3

The list originally formed part of the History of the Alexandrian Episcopate,written in the time of Cyril the Alexandrian (412444) using documentsfrom the archive of the patriarchate. We learn from this document thatDemetrios ordained not three, but ten bishops. It is a signicant differ-

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3 A. Bausi, La collezione aksumita canonico-liturgica, Adamantius, 12 (2006), pp. 4370.Waiting for a publication of the entire Ethiopian nd, which will include a full commen-tary by A. Camplani, see the preliminary commentary by A. Camplani, Lettere episco-pali, storiograa patriarcale e letteratura canonica. A proposito del Codex Veronensis lx,Rivista di Storia del Cristianesimo 3 (2006), pp. 117164.


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ence, indicating that with strong support of the Alexandrian congrega-tion this bishop could act more efciently in the chora than I gave himcredit for. It is not to be excluded that before his episcopate there wereno organised groups of Christians in the chora (or that they were few andvery weak). In this situation the supposition that their emergence was theeffect of the actions of the Church of Alexandria becomes justied(which does not mean that it is, in my opinion, very probable, pleaseexcuse my obstinacy, but to me the continued existence of such a largeblank space on the map of the Christian world is still hard to believe).

The discussion of the appearance of fragments of Christian literaryworks among Egyptian papyri required Bagnall to take a stand in the mat-ter of the number of Christians in the chora. Demonstrating his fondnessfor expressing opinions with gures instead of conventional expressionslike very few or few, Bagnall provides a model of what these numbersmight have been (pp. 1819).4 This operation, a shock to those who areunaccustomed to using statistical models, is worth describing here. Thepoint of departure are two assumptions, which are correct beyond anydoubt: In ad 40 there were probably around 1000 believers in Christ inthe entire Roman Empire; by the late 4th century the overwhelmingmajority of the Empires inhabitants had abandoned pagan cults. Todayancient historians generally agree that the Roman Empires total popula-tion should be estimated to 55 million, of which a tenth part, or 5.5 mil-lion, lived in Egypt. Bagnall assumes that the percentage rate of the annu-al growth of the number of members of Christian communities was 3.4on average. The results of these calculations for dates set in 25-year inter-vals are as follows: 100 753; 125 1,746; 150 4,047; 175 9,382; 200 21,747; 225 50,409; 250 116,849 (p. 20). In Bagnalls opinion, of ca.20,000 Christians in the beginning of the episcopate of Demetrios atleast 5000 lived in Alexandria, which leaves us with 15,000 in the chora,approximately 300 per nome. I think that a careful reader does realisethat we are presented with approximate values and that the data, though

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4 He is inspired by the ideas of K. Hopkins, Christian Numbers and Its Implications,Journal of Early Christian Studies 6 (1998), pp. 185226 and R. Stark, The Rise of Christianity:a Sociologist Reconsiders History, Princeton 1996.



given in exact numbers for the sake of statistical elegance, only gives anidea of the scale and cannot be taken literally. However, Bagnalls nextstep of dividing the 15,000 by the number of nomes is burdened with anerror: in the conversion phase the differences between regions were sig-nicant, since the effects of it still depended on individual factors like thepresence of charismatic personalities (or a lack thereof ), the existence ofpopular pagan sanctuaries, &c. (not to mention the banal matter of dif-ferences, often signicant ones for that matter, in nome population). Thenumbers levelled out gradually.

I am also disturbed by Bagnalls next sentence: It is hard to see whythe average nome would have needed a clergyman of higher status thanpresbyter, and the absence of bishops at this time seems in this light notterribly signicant (p. 23). Bagnall is wrong because he does not take intoconsideration the logic of the Christian cult. The acceptance of themonarchic episcopate model in the Church led to limiting liturgical com-petences of the presbyters. A Christian from the average nome in Egyptcould not be prepared for baptism or baptised without a bishop andmajor doubts are expressed in literature on the subject if it was possibleto give Eucharist in his absence. The distances from village to metropo-lis within the nomes were not that great, but a longer journey (to Alexan-dria!) would have had very serious consequences, completely cuttingChristians off from cult practice. Sufce it to see what the network ofchurches looked like in regions like Syria or Proconsular Africa. All larg-er towns (not only cities) were episcopal sees. Bagnall is mistaken inthinking that 300 Christians in a given area is a small number. Congrega-tions in the 2nd3rd centuries were sometimes much smaller than that.

Books were very expensive. Bagnall puts great emphasis on this fact andhe is undoubtedly correct. However, such a general statement does not sat-isfy him and he needs to dene what the word expensive means. Bagnallhas scarce data on the prices of books, it is always information from a laterperiod than the one that is the subject of his study: they refer to the5th7th century (or even later, the 8th century). Nothing can be done aboutthis, the earlier sources are silent (however, there is important 4th-centuryinformation on the price of writing material and it is included in Bagnallsbook). The oldest attested price is 18 solidi for a codex containing the Old

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and New Testaments. It is mentioned in an apophthegm from the Alpha-betikon devoted to Gelasios (no. 176), who lived in Palestine.5 We learn fromthis text that one of the brothers stole a codex from the old man and triedto sell it. Gelasios did not lose composure when he saw his precious prop-erty in the hands of a seller who had come to him seeking advice on whatprice to propose for it (Gelasios valued the Bible to 16 solidi), he did notprotest and did not try to learn the identity of the seller. Using this text todetermine the real price of a codex is not as simple as one might gatherfrom Bagnalls argument. The trouble lies in the nature of the source.When giving the price of the codex the author/editor of this apophthegmwants to use it to highlight the virtue of the main character, who is oblivi-ous to worldly matters, contemplating the lesson to be learned by thebrother guilty of the theft instead of thinking about his own loss. The pricewas therefore not a neutral element of the background against which theplot developed; it had to be strikingly high, or else the apophthegm wouldnot have had the proper effect.6 Bagnall also refers to the price of a codexcontaining the New Testament mentioned in Pratum Spirituale 134 by JohnMoschos (early 7th century). A certain poor an chorite desired to own acopy of the New Testament. The middleman he turned to, also a monk ofthe Palestinian desert, found a wealthy brother who had for sale a beauti-ful parchment volume he had priced at three so lidi. When the owner of thecodex found out that it was meant for an anchorite, he wanted to simplygive it to him. The latter, in turn, felt guilty and desperately wanted to pay

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5 This apophthegm was part of a collection circulating in Palestine in the rst half ofthe 6th century (it was in the manuscript used by Pelagius and John, the translators of theapophthegms into Latin in the mid-6th century). On the date of the apophthegms whosemain character was Gelasios see R. S. Bagnall, Monks and Property: Rhetoric, Law, andPatronage in the Apophthegmata Patrum and the Papyri, Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies42 (2001), pp. 1920.

6 I am familiar with an apophthegm from the same collection, similar in structure,though it does not mention money. It is Ammoe 134, according to which the main charac-ter lays out 50 artabas of bread in the open air for drying and then, having come to a con-clusion that the locality had something that was potentially harmful to his soul, he aban-doned this fortune saying to his disciples Let us leave this place. Specialists on diet claimthat an artaba of wheat or bread satised the biological needs of an individual for amonth. The author/editor of the apophthegm chose a high number to reach a literary aim;one or two artabas would not have ensured the proper effect.



for the codex. He took up a job in the construction of a water reservoir inthe Sinai, earning ve coins and living on ten lupine seeds a day and man-aged to save up the desired sum. The contrast between 3 solidi and 10lupine seeds emphasises the virtue of the owner of the codex and of thebuyer (I have no intention of discussing the probability of this information;information on the food eaten by the brethren is among the most inten-tionally deformed elements of narration of the apophthegms). The storyhas exactly the same motivational purport as the apophthegm on Gelasios.

Unfortunately, for Bagnalls reasoning also the codex of Gelasiosbelongs in the realm of ction. Volumes containing the complete Biblewere very rare in Antiquity due to their size and the resulting copyingcosts, as well as difculties with their transport and reading. Two suchcodices, the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus, date from the 4thcentury and their spectacularly ceremonial character and quality as far asthe art of bookmaking is concerned even induced some scholars to putforward a most likely erroneous hypothesis that they were among thefty copies made upon the order of Constantine the Great in Caesarea inPalestine in ad 332.7 Nonetheless, these copies may have inspired a modelof a de luxe edition. We have no indication that there existed editions ofthe entire Bible or even of the complete New Testament collected in onevolume before the Constantinian turning point.8 The small Palestinianmonastery of Gelasios was not the place for a luxury, monumental parch-ment edition of the complete Bible. One can hardly trust it to be a testi-mony of a non-literary reality. Of the data cited by Bagnall only the con-clusions of Anne Boudhors (a third of a solidus for a part of the Bible) arereliable, since they are based on documentary texts from the Thebanregion, unfortunately late ones, from the 7th8th century.9

7 We learn about this from Constantines letter preserved in the Life of Constantine 4, 36,the work of Eusebius of Caesarea.

8 For a very convincing discussion of this subject see H. Y. Gamble, Books and ReadersIn the Early Church. A History of Christian Texts, Yale 1995, pp. 7980

9 Anne Boudhors, Copie et circulation des livres dans la rgion thbaine (viie viiiesicles), [in:] A. Delattre & P. Heilporn (ed.), Et maintenant ce ne sont plus que des villages.Thbes et sa rgion aux poques hellnistique, romaine, byzantine, Bruxelles 2008, pp. 149161.

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I wonder if in his assessment of the costliness of books Bagnall is notexaggerating after all. The reason for this is my impression from the read-ing of Pachomian texts, one of which is worth mentioning at this point.I have in mind three passages from the Pachomian rules. In Praecepta 25we read: Codicem si ad legendum petierint, accipient; et finita ebdomade, proptereos qui succedunt in ministerium, suo restituent loco; and in Praecepta 101:Codices qui in fenestra, id est in risco parietis, reponuntur ad vesperum, erunt submanu secundi qui numerabit eos et ex more concludet; nally, in Praecepta atqueinstituta 2: Si codicem postulaverint, deferant eis.10 Specic passages from thePachomian rules cannot be dated with precision, but for all of them theterminus ante is 404, when Jerome translated them into Latin. In the 4thcentury Pachomians do not seem to be a rich congregation, but they havecodices that monks can take to their cells for private reading. I find it dif -cult to imagine the monks coming into their possession, were we to con-sider the sum from the apophthegm of Gelasios trustworthy. Of coursewe can assume that the monks copied the necessary works on their own,having borrowed them, for instance, from a local bishop. However, oneneeds to remember that there is no mention of copying books in thePachomian dossier. Keeping in mind the weakness of the argumentum exsilentio, I would nonetheless like to point out that when creating the rulePachomius and his disciples considered reading (not only listening to)sacred books as something obvious.

Of great signicance for Bagnalls line of reasoning is to determine thenancial resources of churches and of the group that was the most inter-ested in owning books the clergy. In order to do this, he uses the resultsof research carried out by Sabine Hbner, who very diligently collectedinformation on the revenues of the clergy from the time of Saint Cyprian,or the mid-3rd century, until the rst half of the 7th century.11 Dataobtained from various sources (Justinians Novels, patristic texts, includ-ing the especially important letters of Severus, monophysite patriarch of

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10 I refer the reader to an edition of the rules with a good commentary: H. Bacht, DasVermchtnis des Ursprungs ii, Wrzburg 1983.

11 Sabine Hbner, Der Klerus in der Gesellschaft des sptantiken Kleinasien, Stuttgart 2005,pp. 213228.



Antioch from 512 to 518, lives of holy bishops). These sources rather con-sistently show the scale of clergymens annual revenues: 5-10 solidi forpresbyters and deacons, several tens of solidi for bishops of small towns,250365 solidi for bishops of large cities.

In Egyptian documentation, which Hbner left aside, there are manytexts containing information of interest.12 They are usually registers ofclergymen who received sums in cash or in kind, but unfortunately with-out indicating the nature of the disbursement (and often not even itssize). Luckily there is an exception, a papyrus from Hermopolis dated tothe Arab period, the rst line of which reads: gn(siw) tn klhrik(n) togou Yeodrou karp(n) b nd(iktvnow).13 The register lists one pres-byter, ve deacons, and one doorman. On the verso the content is sum-marised as follows: () (). They receive wheat,eight artabas each, except for the doorman, who gets ve artabas. Theamounts are modest for an annual income and insufcient for sustainingeven a single individual. The church in question was a martyrion, not anepiscopal or parochial church and this fact may have had a negative effecton the size of annual disbursements for its clergymen. There must havebeen a relationship between the frequency of religious services (masses,baptisms, in the later period also blessings of marriages, collective prayerat church, participation in processions, &c.) and the level of income ofmembers of the clergy. In this respect the differences between churchesof various categories were signicant. We do not know if the clergymenlisted in the register received something else, wine for instance, howoften they gathered for a common meal after mass, when they consumedthe donations brought by the faithful it was all part of their individualbudgets. From another letter of interest, P. Kln ii 112 (5th6th cent.), welearn that a certain presbyter serving in a martyrion was unable to sustainhimself from the crops of two arouras of land that belonged to this cult

12 Collected by G. Schmelz, Kirchliche Amtstrger im sptantiken gypten nach den Aus-sagen der griechischen und koptischen Papyri und Ostraka, Leipzig 2002, pp. 204217.

13 I know the text from a handout distributed by Nicholas Gonis at the 7th Interna-tional Congress of Coptic Studies in Leyden in 2000. It was not published in the acts ofthe congress and I was unable to nd it in N. Goniss publications.

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place.14 He must have had a family if he were alone, the yield from sucha plot (within 20 artabas of grain minus taxes amounting to more or less4 artabas) would have sufced for one person.

Regardless of how much can be learned from the information col -lected by Hbner and Schmelz as relates to the incomes of the clergy, itis clear to me that these data cannot be used for the aims Bagnall set forhimself. The reason for this is the peculiarity of the nancial situation ofthe clergy. Let me recall that in Antiquity members of the clergy wererecruited among mature men who usually did not abandon their previouseconomic activities. They derived their income from land, crafts, trade,ofces, &c., so the Church allowance received for being part of the cler-gy was supplementary to sums obtained from non-ecclesiastical sources.15

We know of clergymen who gave up their assets for ascetic reasons andsubsequently lived only from what they received from the Church. How-ever, such cases were very rare. Furthermore, the social composition ofthe clergy was so varied that wealth disparities must have been common-place; they make it impossible to establish an average. All in all, we knowvery little about the nancial status of the clergy, too little to be certainthat none of its members could afford to buy books.16

It has been established for some time that Christians were not res -ponsible for the change of book form that was the transition from scroll to codex, but many researchers are still convinced that Christiansin the rst three centuries ad had a marked preference for the codex.

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14 The rst edition with commentary by H. Eideneier Ein byzantinisches Emp fehl -ungsschreiben auf Papyrus, ZPE 6 (1970), pp. 189192.

15 Patristic and normative texts do not tell us this, papyri were needed to give an idea onhow misleading is the data which for ideological reasons portray the situation of the clergy as a group fully devoted to work in the Church and completely dependent on it formaterial goods. Papyri, testimonies of everyday situations, deserve our trust much morethan ecclesiastical and secular normative texts. For a listing of data on secular activities ofthe clergy, unfortunately no longer complete due to the passage of time, see Ewa Wip-szycka, Les ressources et les activits conomiques des glises en gypte du ive au viiie sicle, Brux-elles 1972, pp. 154173.

16Bagnall is aware of this peculiar situation of the clergy and he mentions it on p. 62.

However, this awareness did not stop him from engaging in a lengthy discussion on thematerial status of the clergy and the possibility to buy books by its members.



In the light of the data collected by Bagnall, they are mistaken. Here arehis results:

Christian and Non-Christian Codices by Century (ldab datings)

Third-Century Christian Texts

As regards the milieu in which the conversion of the book from scrollto codex took place, Bagnall gives his full support to those who believe itwas Rome, which hosted a long tradition of using tablets not only ineveryday life but also in ofcial situations. In his opinion, the diffusion ofthe codex is a part of the well-known process of adopting Roman modelsby provincial elites, in other words Romanisation.

The evidence concerning the choice of the codex form by Christiansfor the transcription of their holy books suggests that this innovation wasnot the result of a long evolution, but a sudden change. In order toexplain it Bagnall follows a path indicated by Colin H. Roberts andTheodore C. Skeat, who wrote in 1983 that the adoption of the codex

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Century i i/ii ii ii/iii iii iii/iv iv

Total codices 3 3 27 67 186 124 252

Non-Christian codices 3 2 21 47 123 80 153

Christian codices 0 1 6 20 63 44 99

Christian as percentageof the total

0 33 22 30 34 35 39

Category Codices Rolls

Old Testament 23 3

New Testament 27 2

Apocryphal biblical 3 6

Hermas 4 2

Patristic 6 2

Other 3 4

Total 66 19


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must derive from a centre with sufcient authority and centralization todevise such innovations and to impose them in Christendom generally.17

They rst suggested Jerusalem and Antioch, and later Rome. Larry W.Hurtado criticised this suggestion for naively assuming the scheme of acentralised ecclesiastical authority and I am profoundly convinced thathe is right in doing so.18 There is nothing to indicate that the heads ofecclesiastical capitals took an interest in such matters as the form ofbooks. Christian congregations of the second half of the 2nd and the 3rdcentury are characterised by exceptional diversity as far as institutionsand customs are concerned. Even liturgy (text of liturgical formulas, cal-endar, &c.) and a large part of the theological sphere were not yet sub-jected to unication processes. The formation of Roberts and Skeat tookplace in the mid-20th century when historians of the Church had troubleaccepting the multitude of trends and ideas it encompassed and the bish-ops liberty of action. This explains their ideas. As far as Rome is con-cerned, her bishop was a gure of great authority, but he was not in powerto impose rules on community life; we have ample proof of this, and ifanyone thought differently in the past, it was the effect of Catholic wish-ful thinking that blocked the view of facts which did not t into thescheme of the papal primacy. The assessment of the scope of what wasunied in the Church and what was subject to local uctuations has shift-ed signicantly over the last fifty years. It is, at least in part, the doing ofthose historians of Christianity who have re-dened orthodoxy and itschannels of diffusion. I see no reason why the diffusion of the codexshould not have been governed solely by cultural patterns. The model wasRoman, indeed, but this does not mean it had to have explicit support ofthe centre of authority, in the case of Christians of the bishop of Rome.

*

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17 C. H. Roberts & T. C. Skeat, The Birth of the Codex, London 1983, pp. 5758.18 L. W. Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins,

Grand Rapids 2006, p. 72, n. 95. Bagnall rejects Hurtados criticism, since the latter dis-cussed the idea of Roberts and Skeat with reference to the 1st and early 2nd century,whereas he is interested in the century that follows. However, the Church of the 3rd cen-tury was still far from uniformity, which progressed with difculty in the 4th century, andnot in all aspects.



With Bagnalls book Everyday Writing in the Graeco-Roman East, theterm everyday writing enters the vocabulary of researchers on Antiquity.I am convinced that we will all use it.

Although polemics appear only on some pages of the book, it is as awhole a protest to Harris views presented in his famous book that signi-cantly lowered the level of literacy in the ancient world, especially in LateAntiquity.19 Whereas in the rst of the works under discussion Bagnallstressed the small size of the circle of people who read and owned books,in the second he characterises the ancient society as the literary society.

My experience as a historian of Egyptian monasticism leaves meenthusiastic about Bagnalls reasoning.

The second book to a much greater extent than the rst puts anemphasis on providing information. Although we should all monitor theemergence of new testimonies of literacy, it quickly turns out that ourpersonal knowledge is far from complete. I admit that what Bagnallwrites, for instance, about clay seals originally found on documents writ-ten on papyrus or leather was something of a surprise to me, although Iwas familiar with this type of artefacts from Hellenistic Uruk/Warka. Theseals survived thanks to res, which had consumed the archives of actsbut preserved the clay. Their numbers go into tens of thousands and theirorigins are cities as distant as Artaxata in Armenia or Carthage. Around16,000 seals were found in only one house on Delos destroyed by re in169 bc! They prove that texts were often used for economic and legal pur-poses and the authorities of various states established institutions fortheir registration.

I also confess that thanks to Bagnalls book I have become more closely acquainted with documents written using Greek letters in theBactrian language over an extensive area for about a thousand years andhitherto known thanks to a very small group of texts. Over 150 docu-ments from the years 342/3781/2, brought to light by clandestine digging,appeared on the antiquarian market and some of them still await publi-cation (their English translations are published, however). The Greek

19 W. V. Harris, Ancient Literacy, Cambridge Mass. 1989. Harris deserves credit for onething: his hypotheses stirred an uproar, thus contributing to a signicant broadening ofknowledge on literacy.

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alphabet was adopted for the Bac trian language upon the ordinance ofKanishka (probably ad 127151), a Kushan ruler, and the result proved tobe very resistant to political changes over the subsequent eras. The dis-covery has already supplied a great deal of information on the society ofeastern Iran and it signicantly changes our view of the scope andlongevity of Greek inuence on the region, which ceased to be ruled by aGreek dynasty in ca. 130 bc.

To the different categories of testimonies of everyday writing dis-cussed in the book I would like to add one that escaped Bagnalls atten-tion. They are Greek letters dating from the second half of the 6th to the4th century bc, 25 in total, written on lead plaques and sometimes onearthenware sherds. The texts predominantly come from the northshores of the Black Sea and from Emporion in Spain.20 They are espe-cially useful to historians of economic and social relations.

I read the chapter Writing on Ostraca? A Culture of Potsherds? withkeen interest understandable for someone who systematically uses ostra-ca in research on monastic centres and has for a long time suspected thatthere was something that can be called a culture (or perhaps, better said,a custom) of potsherds. The number of ostraca published or ready forpublication keeps growing as a result of increasingly careful archaeologi-cal investigation; as Bagnall points out, their retrieval requires specialcaution on the part of the archaeologists, for they are not always imme-diately visible in refuse or ll layers.

Ostraca come to light on many sites in the Mediterranean and in Iran.In Egypt they existed before the coming of the Greeks, but there was noplace for them in Arab Egypt after the 8th century, when the scale ofeveryday writing decreased. In general, ostraca are the ideal writing sup-port for various short, temporary, purely functional texts. Since they keepwell in a geographical setting where rain is scarce and the material used isfree and ubiquitous, they should be everywhere. But they are not.

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20 See for instance: P. Ceccarelli, Messaggio scritto e messaggio orale: strategie narra-tive erodotee, [in:] M. Giangiulio, (ed.), Erodoto e il modello erodoteo. Formazione e trans-missione delle tradizioni storiche in Grecia, Trento 2005, pp. 2958, and M. Dana, Lettre surplomb dApatorios Lanax. Un document archaque dOlbia du Pont, ZPE 148 (2004),pp. 114



Bagnall somewhat prematurely assumes that good excavations alwaysyield ostraca; they most certainly do not. Works at Naqlun have beenconducted with great care from the very beginning, but ostraca were veryfew, although a monastic environment of exactly the same type as theostraca-yielding Monastery of Phoibammon in Western Thebes shouldbe rich in inscribed potsherds. There are no ostraca in the hermitages ofEsna and Kellia (but there are numerous grafti and dipinti on walls, sowe are without a doubt dealing with dwellings of people who can write).We can give multiple examples while waiting for an explanation, which Icannot say that I can offer.

Studying the manner of administrating a large monastery like Bawitteaches us to what extent the choice between ostracon and papyrus candepend on various factors, including the nature of the texts. Invoiceshanded to camel- and donkey drivers (probably barge operators as well)transporting wine, grain and other goods were usually written on ostraca,but orders for payment or issue of goods from storerooms of the samemonastery were written on papyrus. This cannot be incidental. AlainDelattre found a sensible explanation for this phenomenon: ostraca weredisposed of after the cargo was registered, but orders for payment/issuewere kept, at least for some time, in the ofce of the management of themonasterys economic affairs (diakonia). Papyrus had the advantage oftaking up less archive space and sheets needed for such small texts couldbe obtained by cutting up large scrap documents.21

A signicant place in Bagnalls work is occupied by the analysis of aphenomenon occurring in the Middle East and consisting in the emer-gence of languages other than the dominant metropolitan tongues, Greekand Latin, as vehicles for both literary and everyday written expression.From these languages he selects two for case study: Coptic and Syriac.Coptic, more familiar to a historian of Egypt like Bagnall, is discussed withgreat care (albeit on few pages) and with new ideas about the circum-stances in which it emerged and gained popularity. Bagnall has long beena defender of the hypothesis that until the Arab invasion Coptic was a lan-

21 Papyrus coptes et grecs du monastre dapa Apollo de Baout conservs aux Muses Royaux dArtet dHistoire de Bruxelles, Bruxelles 2005, pp. 165166.

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guage of private communication used primarily in monastic environments.Leslie MacCoull, who in her numerous articles has argued to make Copticwriting equal in status to the Greek, has done it per fas et nefas against sta-tistical obviousness, only to glorify Coptic culture. Bagnalls argumentshows how dangerous such an approach is, how it leads to a deformationof the image of the Byzantine period and, most of all, of the importantphenomenon of bilinguism, and demonstrates that, if we do not take itinto account, we cease to understand the society of this period.

The reading of chapter 3 Documenting Slavery in Hellenististic andRoman Egypt must be intimidating to the non-papyrologist. Bagnall chosethis topic to show the reader how to use papyri when working on a specicproblem; how often one needs to ask about the criteria decisive in makingthe document (mostly deeds of sale and manumission of slaves); what partof them may have been preserved and where; how much of it may havebeen published and whether or not it was done competently enough. Hepatiently argues that the papyri at our disposal do not provide a photo-graphic image of the reality, that a simple summary of texts does not bringforth knowledge of social and economic life. I realise that for those whofollow in his footsteps Bagnall sets high standards, which they will meetonly after completing a training under the masters watchful eye.

What of people who are full of good will and would like to use papyriin various situations, but have not had the privilege of training longenough? They cannot learn the art on their own. Such researchers shouldnd works of papyrologists who interpret the data from papyri in such away that they would be able to safely use it for their own benet and fortheir readers. There is a need for many scholars capable of playing therole of middlemen, as Bagnall has done.

Ewa WipszyckaDepartment of PapyrologyInstitute of ArchaeologyUniversity of WarsawKrakowskie Przedmiecie 26/2800927 Warsaw 64Poland

e-mail: [email protected]

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